The explosion in recent years of the availability and use of the worldwide Internet has made available an almost limitless amount of information. For corporations, this has meant that the once difficult to expand and maintain internal computer networks have become merely private corners of the vast Internet, making tremendous data available at every desktop. The World Wide Web and intranets continue to grow, and while it has become easier to make information available through such services, it is often impossible to obtain access to exactly the right information in a desired form. For example, the recent proliferation of the use of browsers has created an instantaneous demand for information formatted in either HTML or other browser-readable formats. As is known, documents stored in HTML include embedded within the data formatting codes that tell the ultimate browser how to display the information. For example, headers may be shown in bold while chapter titles are displayed as hyperlinks to display other sections of the document or other documents. As a result of the demand for such document coding, organizations and individuals have devoted substantial effort and expense to the task of copying and reformatting data that already exists on the Internet.
With corporations devoting millions of man-hours to duplicate and adapt corporate data into forms more suitable for presentation on a Web-based Intranet or other network, this leads to multiplied data-maintenance costs and the proliferation of obsolete data. Specially coded/formatted data can quickly become obsolete when browser languages change or are improved by advances.
One possible, but unworkable, solution, is to simply display the documents in whatever format they are stored. Straight text is shown as straight text, for example. However, this loses the increased functionality and improved readability given by enhanced formatting and hyperlinks. Further, displaying more complex formatted data, such as word-processing and page-layout formats, would practically require running the programs that created them or at least customized translators--an often impossibly complicated and cumbersome solution. Even when it can be done, there are often problems of version control, unavailability of translating tools and inconsistent presentations.